Changing Organizational Culture
The Seven Step Change Model

12/10/2011

Urooj Khan
MBA Regular
10739

Supervised By
Ali Mujahid

Table of Contents Culture and Organizational Culture 3 Culture 3 Organizational Culture 3 Influences on Culture 3 Cultural Measurement Dimensions 4 Changing Organizational Culture 8 Conclusion 13 Bibliography 14

Culture and Organizational Culture
Culture
The grand total of all the objects, ideas, knowledge, ways of doing things, habits, values, and attitudes which each generation in a society passes on to the next is what the anthropologist refers to as the culture of a group (Nord, 1972).
According to Inkeles, culture is the social heritage, all the knowledge, beliefs, customs, and skills that are available to members of a society (Inkeles, 1964).
The famous Dutch behavioral scientist, Geert Hofstede defined culture as the collective mental programming of a people in an environment. He later defined culture as the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group from another (Muriithi N, 2003).
Organizational Culture
Edgar Schein says that organizational culture is developed over time as people in the organization learn to deal successfully with problems of external adaptation and internal integration. It becomes the common language and the common background (Schein E. , 1999).
Culture starts with leadership, is reinforced with the accumulated learning of the organizational members, and is a powerful (albeit often implicit) set of forces that determine human behavior.
An organization’s culture goes deeper than the words used in its mission statement. Culture is the web of tacit understandings, boundaries, common language, and shared expectations maintained over time by the members (L.Aiman-Smith, 2004).
Influences on Culture
The factors that form organizational